Sunday, September 27, 2015

This thing about driving?

Driving...
What is it that allures us to it?
Magnetize us to it?
Gravitate us to it?

Is it the speed?
The freedom?
Or just the sensation of danger?

Driving for me has always been a fascination, both safely on the road and when driving at speeds...
Especially driving at speeds...

The realm you enter when you drive at speeds, that which you cannot logically explain... like another world, just you and your car...
You and the car... the car no longer becomes just a tool, it becomes your friend, it becomes your extension, it becomes part of you.
You communicate with it, caress it, and convince it to join the journey together...
When you are in such realm... it is the most wonderful feeling in the world.

Aryton Senna seems to be very good at philosophically explaining this sensation of driving;
"That day I suddenly realized, I was no longer driving consciously and I was in a different dimension from here. The circuit for me was a tunnel which I was just going... going, going... and I realized I was well beyond my conscious understanding..."

Exploring the limits, the limits of grip, the limits of speed, especially the limit of our own limitation.
When everything 'clicks', you notice it by then... how the world around you changes, how things changes around you and the car.
You can feel your own heart beat, you can feel everything around you with uncanny clarity, you can listen to even the slightest echo of your soul.

Ari Vatanen can sums up driving pretty much poetically :
"When the driving is going really well, it flows like a dance.
I almost gets goosebumps while driving... in the same way when I'm listening to the Finlandia Hymm and getting goosebumps.
I get that same feeling while driving, when it's flowing like a dance and it almost feels like I'm not sitting in the car myself anymore, everything happens subconsciously."

Such things cannot be understood by those who never felt it, the love of the cars, the love of the character of the cars, the love of driving the cars.

In some way, for me maybe driving is just a means... a means to escape my own reality and into another world, even for just a moment....

This article is just a sudden whim of mine to try to explain this illogical issue in our lives as car enthusiast, and I know... only another car enthusiast can understand what I mean.

Beside, this is a good reason to post MOAR Group B videos :P

And a driving article would never be complete without Ari Vatanen's beautiful "Climb Dance" :)